A number of systemic diseases are currently treated with medicines that provide amelioration of symptoms or complications of the illnesses but which do not specifically target the pathologic basis of disease. These illnesses are characterized as “chronic diseases” for no reason other than the fact that, for the majority of patients, the diseases are chronically managed rather than acutely treated.
The reasons that chronic diseases are not treated definitively differ based on the specific diseases in question. In some cases, the diseases are not understood well enough as of yet for definitive therapies to have been developed to solve them. In other cases, the definitive therapy, if it does exist, is too unattractive (e.g. high morbidity or mortality, high risk of complications, inaccessible) for the majority of patients to achieve therapeutic relief. In either case, chronic management of the illness burdens the patient with the need for ongoing medical attention and burdens the healthcare provider and system to continue to deliver episodic (and expensive) care of chronic diseases and their complications.
Diabetes is a metabolic disease in which a person develops high blood sugar because the person's body does not produce enough insulin or the cells of the body are incapable of effectively responding to the produced insulin. Primarily, diabetes is of two types: Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 diabetes results from the body's autoimmune destruction of pancreatic beta cells and, consequently, the body's failure to produce enough insulin. Type 2 diabetes is a complex metabolic derangement related to obesity that causes hyperglycemia through insulin resistance (in which the body's cells fail to properly utilize the produced insulin) and eventually inadequate insulin production to meet the body's needs.
Currently, there are several procedures aimed at treating diabetes based on the above concept. The procedures require major surgery, removal of portions of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, and/or long-term implants. As with any major surgery, gastric bypass surgery carries a risk of complications.
Devices have been developed to delivery energy to the body. For example, cardiac ablation devices have been designed to delivery ablative energy to coronary tissue. Additionally, urethral resection devices have been designed to burn or cut away portions of a prostate. Each of these technologies has been modified and adapted toward effective usage in the particular portion of the body to be treated as well as the particular disease to be treated.
New inventions that can harness novel physiologic understanding of diseases and deliver therapies that are therapeutically beneficial, accessible to patients, and reduce healthcare costs are needed. Specifically, there is a need to provide a therapeutic treatment of patient diseases and disorders such as diabetes, with a procedure in the GI tract that is simple, and minimally invasive, and has other advantages for patients.